Weapon in hand, Ayer reassessed the situation, hole in wall included. I couldn’t help my smile as the wild magic brushed over my skin with the feel of feathers. Maybe I should kill him. Then I wouldn’t have to decide if it was right or not. End him, the mystics demanded, the urge strengthening as myriad voices became one, louder than my own. End them all!
“Right,” Ayer said, then dove through the hole in the wall, fleeing.
I couldn’t help myself, and I stumbled after him as the mystics took control. You will stop! I demanded even as I felt my feet pulled out from under me. Snarling, I spun as I hit the floor. Edden’s shocked expression flashed over him as I raised my hand to strike him.
“Enough!” I shouted at the mystics as he let go and fell back. Groaning, I curled into a ball. It took all my strength to keep from killing him, from killing them all with a blast of wild magic. Panting, I huddled where I was, but the mystics refused to believe that some people were worthy of trust and others weren’t, that people were different, not the same.
“We have to go,” David whispered, and I pulled my head up. They were both looking at me, and nodding, I shakily got to my feet.
“Sorry,” I said, giving the hole in the wall a last look. Edden is my friend, I tried to explain to the mystics. David, too. I trust them with my life.
End them, the mystics clamored. End all of them. Every single last one.
“You will not,” I whispered, ill as the wild magic they were giving off turned my stomach. What if they got back to the Goddess? They might give her the idea to end us all.
“Rachel?”
It was David, and I waved his reaching hand away. “Don’t touch me,” I panted, afraid the mystics would misunderstand. “I’m okay. Let’s go.”
Dark face sorrowful, he nodded. He gave Annie one long glance before turning and going out before us, the alpha in him making him graceful and resolute. He has left the dead before, I realized, not bothering to explain to the mystics the emotions I was feeling. It wasn’t fair. Hell, it wasn’t even just.
In the distance was the noise of battle, and I wondered how many people they’d brought—that, and where Ivy and Jenks were.
Ivy and Jenks? the mystics wondered, and I had to explain it since the once-splintered mystics outnumbered the handful of voices that had a grasp of friendship. Understanding bled through them like water, and slowly the confusion eased.
We crept into the hallway, and I thought my sock feet looked odd on the flat brown carpet. “We can’t go the way we came in,” Edden said tersely.
“Garage is that way,” David said. “I’ve got three packs out there ranging about. We get out of here, we’ll be fine.”
“Which way? These hallways all look alike to me.”
David made a face. “It’s that way,” he muttered, pointing and getting us moving again. “I can smell garage.”
I felt small between them, even with the thousand voices echoing between my ears, numb as I was pushed along like a leaf in the wind. “Rachel, stay behind me,” Edden said as we paused at the fire door.
David put an ear to the door, listening. “I think we’re good.” He opened the door a crack and looked through. Silence and darkness met us. Behind came the pop of guns. They’d lost their meaning, but my unhelped slash of alarm brought the mystics awake.
End their dream! a slew of voices insisted suddenly.
Be still! another, smaller faction insisted, and that was the one I upheld, turning the tide though we were outnumbered. I couldn’t tell who was who anymore. They were all mixed up, all of them driving me crazy.
I can’t do this forever. Confusion seeped up from the corners of my mind as David beckoned me through and into the dark. I could feel an open space, hear an echo from their shoes, and grit scrunched under my sock feet.
“Let me find the light switch,” Edden said, his voice drifting away. It was an undead vampire’s garage, and the best were usually lightproof. This one was no exception.
Found it, I thought, the mystics in me reading the patterns of electricity in the unseen wall. With a thought, I flipped the energy flow and the lights came on, flicking eerily until they warmed up. Dust coated a row of cars, and Edden pulled his hand back from the light switch, never having touched it. Seeing his unease, I shrugged. “Thanks.”
Pace increasing, we shuffled for the small door at the end of the room. There had to be at least half a dozen, all small and fast. A thump shook the floor. Edden looked at David in question, and the younger man shook his head.
“Ah, can you do any magic?” David asked, not knowing that I’d switched the light on.
“The trick is to keep from doing it,” I said, thinking the jet-black car we were passing was beautiful—sparking a mystic conversation in me about why I used mass to move through more mass instead of just moving in the space between. I had to get rid of them before they drove me crazy.
Uneasy, David gave me lots of room as he reached for the door. My head came up as it opened, the scent of burning city a balm after the stuffy, vampire-incense-rich air. The mystics picked up on my desire to be free, bolstering my need to be outside. I practically bolted out, coming to a shocked stop at the three men in the bushes. Fear blossomed as I slid to a halt, gasping at the surge of wild magic. Vampires.
End them! the mystics raged, and I gaped at the three men in horror as wild magic coursed through me, my not-mine desire to destroy them burning bright.
You will listen! I shouted into my mind, staggering into David as I struggled for control, beating the thousand voices back, demanding that they heed my one. You will listen to me!
“It’s okay! I’ve got them cuffed!” the Were in the borrowed FIB hat exclaimed as I fell back in apparent terror. “They gave themselves up.”
“I never agreed to killing masters,” the vampire in the raggedy T-shirt said, his hands indeed pulled tight behind him, but if they were FIB-issue cuffs, they wouldn’t hold.
“Is that the woman Ayer has been going on about?” the other vampire said, and I hunched into a ball, my feet in the gravel and my hands clenched and breath held as I tried not to kill them. The scent of my cotton shirt filled my nose, and I focused on it, picking the details of the aroma apart to distract myself. Dusky, dry stones in the sun. “It’s okay, ma’am. Ayer’s crazy. We won’t hurt you.”
David pulled me to my feet and drew me past them into the shadows. “She’s not scared. She’s trying not to kill you,” he muttered. “Let’s go. Where is everyone?”
The man with the FIB cap pushed the vampires into motion. “Tailing them. They had a back door we didn’t know about, and most got out that way.” He hesitated. “Is that Morgan?” he asked, his voice holding disappointment as I stumbled, head down and not watching where I was going.
“It’s been a bad day,” David said, his hand still on my elbow. “Edden, where did you leave the car?” he asked, and Edden pushed his mustache out as he scanned the long-abandoned streets. Behind us, something exploded in a harsh pop.
“South,” Edden said, and we started up the crumbling abandoned roadway in the dark. I didn’t know why the mystics accepted David’s touch when everyone else was considered a threat, but I needed it, and I lagged, head down, as the mystics demanded I follow the splintered majority and wipe everything clean. It was a bad day, indeed. “Help me,” I whispered, and his grip tightened. “Don’t let go.”
“We’ll get you sorted out,” David said. “Try to numb it,” he suggested, thinking it was battle rage.
But that would only make things worse. If I numbed myself, the mystics would overrule my single voice and take control. Heart pounding, I refused them any sway. I moved under David’s hand, not seeing the abandoned homes or the cracked, potholed street. The sky was red, low clouds reflecting the light from the fires burning in the Hollows, and slowly I began to think again as the mystics became bored and drifted away.
“Is she okay?” Edden questioned, looking back at us.
“Ask me later,” I panted, leaning heavily on David, dizzy as the mystics darted away from me and back, bringing to me confusing visions of what they saw. There was a rustling about us, a wind that wasn’t born from rising air or lowering masses.
“Where’s the van?” Edden said in affront as we halted at an abandoned gas station.
David’s wide shoulders slumped. “You lost the van?”
Edden spun. “I left it right here!”
“We’re in the wilds! You can’t leave a working car in the wilds!”
Most of the mystics had left me, and my head came up, daring to believe that I might be rid of them altogether. “There’s a bus stop. You want me to see what the schedule is?”
“They don’t run buses out here,” Edden said, reaching under his cap to scratch his head. The soft glow of a screen shone, lighting up his face, showing the worry wrinkles around his eyes. “Give me a second. I’m not getting a good signal.”
“Because they don’t put towers out here either!” David muttered, peeved as he turned his back on us, watching the dark as we stood under the gas station awning. In the nearby distance came a rustling in the weeds, and I staggered as a hundred different mystic perspectives of the same view hammered at me. I wondered if I looked that ill or if it was just my imagination. Nauseated, I shoved away all views but the one coming from my eyes. The mystics buzzed over it, clouds of them following the electrical impulses through my brain to analyze how I put it all together. My head hurt.
David’s concern was obvious when he turned back to us. He’d heard the rustling as well. “We need to keep moving. Who are you calling?”
Mood somber, Edden put the phone to his ear. “Ivy.”
“Ivy?” Mistrust surged, and I banished it with a vengeance.
Edden smiled. “She’s downtown, under the streets with Jenks looking for you. Bis, too. Apparently your aura has shifted and he can’t find you. Ah, Rachel? I don’t want to know about those two cadavers in your front room, but they’d better be gone tomorrow. Okay?”
Nodding, I turned away, blinking fast. The memory of Ivy’s last expression passed over me, confusing the mystics and prompting a flurry of discussion over I, us, and we. Ivy and Jenks were looking for me. I knew they would, and I felt loved.
Edden pulled the phone from his ear, ended the call, and hit Jenks’s number instead. “Half the city is looking for you. The only reason we found you first was because of Trent.”
Trent? How had he known where I was? And why hadn’t he come to get me?
Betrayed, the mystics hummed, and I shoved it aside. Trent hadn’t betrayed me. He’d told Edden how to find me, and that was more than he really needed to do.
No, betrayed! a single mystic screamed, and I spun, hearing a new meaning in the rustling from the dark. An image of glowing eyes burst in my thoughts, ignored until now.
“It’s them!” I shouted, wild magic a sudden, painful pulse.
“Down!” David shouted, falling on me.
I hit the ground, watching as the two surrendering vampires with us fell, groaning. The soft retort of twin shots echoed an instant later. Swearing, David shoved my head down and crawled to them, Edden joining him with a frantic haste as they jammed whatever was handy onto gaping wounds that glinted wetly in the dark.
We were under attack and I could do nothing, struggling with a splinter of a Goddess bent on revenge. “Not this time,” I gasped, wrenching control back. “Make a circle. A circle!”
I gave them an outlet, and a circle sprang up around us, humming with an unreal but familiar sensation. I wasn’t connected to a line. It was as if I had a direct line to the divine, my every wish granted. Even the ugly ones, if I wasn’t careful.
“Damn, Rachel, you’re glowing,” David said as he glanced up, his hands bloodied, and I looked at myself, scared. I was, the mystics’ energy leaking out of my pores.
“Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I said as I got up. It was better. Somehow it was getting better, and I wavered only slightly as David and Edden rose as well, standing beside me and safe in my circle.
My lip curled as Ayer sauntered out of the dark with about twenty men, all dressed alike with those damn little caps. How could I have ever thought he looked like Kisten? Ayer’s soul was ugly. He was nothing like Kisten. Careful, I thought, not wanting to get the mystics riled up and out of control, but a small part of me was halfway to letting them have their way. Humming, the mystics darted in and out of me with little zings of power. We’d found common ground. I didn’t understand why, but they were finally listening to me.
The Free Vampires stopped eight feet back with Ayer coming a few feet closer. He motioned for his men to start laying a thick electrical cord in a circle about us, and I stifled a shiver. We were safe in my mystic-born circle, but it was a trap. I’d managed to gain control of this small fraction. I’d lose it if he took them from me.
“Looks like you’ve got a handle on it, Morgan,” he said, and I tried to flatten my hair. Trent’s hair floated when he did magic. I’d always thought it was because of the ever-after energy, but maybe it was mystics.
“Then you’d be wrong,” I shot back.
He turned. “Bring her down,” he said as he walked away. “Kill the rest.”
“Sir?”
“You want them to talk?” he shouted, clearly disgusted. “Kill them!”
Edden shifted his weight, his hand on his pistol. “They can’t do anything if we’re in this circle, can they?”